


Liminal Spaces

by LotusRox



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Established relationship for thesival, First Meetings, M/M, Not actually unrequited love for gradence, Post-Canon, Pre-slash for thedence, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 13:51:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13412643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LotusRox/pseuds/LotusRox
Summary: It’s almost funny how Credence can still feel things after what happened. He can make out bewilderment at realizing Mr. Graves’ preferences, ugly jealousy churning out heartburn. Relief, too. He can’t stay - he knows MACUSA won’t hesitate to take a better attempt at killing him if he doesn’t get there first, and he doesn’t want to cause more disturbances. But he’s glad Mr. Graves won’t be left alone.“Will you take care of him?”, he asks instead.“It’s the reason I came”, replies Theseus Scamander, but his attention is now on Credence. Taking him in, it seems, from head to toe.----Or,the one when Credence visits a hospital room, and finds a second chance in an unlikely place.





	Liminal Spaces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [na_shao](https://archiveofourown.org/users/na_shao/gifts), [maggiedragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggiedragon/gifts).



> Lyss ([maggiedragon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/maggiedragon)) and Elsie ([na_shao](http://archiveofourown.org/users/na_shao)) are Actual Goddesses Of Writing who constantly spoil me with the most amazing fics, and I'm stupidly happy I got to finish this one. How could I not try to give back at least a little to them?
> 
> So yeah, basically: I'm in Way Too Deep with this OT3, they're super cool, and it's their fault. I hope y'all enjoy this one.

* * *

  


  


_"Perce?"_

The click of the opening lock had failed to shake Credence awake. But this trembling voice does, all softly rolled consonants, and he hadn't spent the past eighteen years living in a church to let himself be seen when it’s not safe to be seen. He says nothing, doesn't move from his spot in the shadows of the corner.

Magical hospital or not, it's far past visiting hours, he can barely make out the silhouette of this newcomer. But it's not like he has any right to be there, either.

"You fucking _git,_ I can't believe...", the man starts in what he identifies as anger, and then silence claims them all back, thick like a blanket of snow. The dry sob Credence hears next is stark, a crack in the ice. Louder than the whine of the door closing itself as this stranger crosses the distance to the bed in the middle of the room.

There’s a winter moon outside, coming and going amidst thick clouds. Its light unveils long red hair when he leans down to kiss the sleeping form of Mr. Graves.

Credence vanishes. Disappearing is barely an effort anymore now he knows how to, a long-held wish granted at last. This is not for his eyes to see, and this man looks like he’ll linger.

The Obscurus doesn’t really have eyes. It hears and smells and feels the magic and emotions it feeds on in flashes of colors. Credence can’t tear his gaze away anyway.

 _"I should have known",_ and oh. Oh, those are words he knows well, and he can't help but feel for this stranger and his quiet sorrow in a way a parade of tearful MACUSA officials has failed to evoke.

Sorrow like sea brine. Love and pain entwined like sugar and ashes, tired copper-white.

The pang of it hurts in the depths of his dark fractals. Credence makes a choice and, slowly, coalesces back into a physical form.

"Nobody could have", he offers. And he’s intruding here, he is aware of it. But it’s the consolation he could offer.

He’s aware, too, of the spectral figure he cuts - too pale, too bruised, stolen clothes hanging off his frame. His encounter with the Aurors had only added to a lifetime of exhaustion in his marrow.

Still more comforting than being a disembodied voice, though. And yet, he finds himself at the business end of a wand, and--

And he closes his eyes. Sighs, body loose and waiting. He had been living on borrowed time, anyway. Had seen what he had needed to see.

"They say", he adds quietly, "he should be waking up tomorrow ."

"Name", states the stranger. Professional. Composed, if barely.

"Credence Barebone, sir."

The man doesn’t drop his wand but he looks like he might have.

"You're the boy", he mutters, all slow movements to lower it down, and Credence almost could've mistaken his tone by wonder. "But Newt said..." and then interrupts himself again, shakes his head. "I'm sorry.”

 _No offense taken,_ Credence doesn’t say. Doesn’t realize the full implications in this stranger recognizing him, either - too used to believe in his own worthlessness.

“Newt? Mr. Scamander?”, he tries. His memory had been a hazy, broken thing for as long as he could remember, but wizards have strange names. And the gentle accent he had heard at the subway station had sounded just like this.

“He’s my little brother. My name is Theseus.”

This introduction couldn’t have possibly rang any bells. Mr. Scamander had tried to help him, but Credence had known him only in passing. And for all he had fallen for Mr. Graves, the older man had been so intensely private he--

He had never mentioned being _like him._

Or having a lover.

It’s almost funny how Credence can still feel things after what happened. He can make out bewilderment at realizing Mr. Graves’ preferences, ugly jealousy churning out heartburn. Relief, too. He can’t stay - he knows MACUSA won’t hesitate to take a better attempt at killing him if he doesn’t get there first, and he doesn’t want to cause more disturbances. But he’s glad Mr. Graves won’t be left alone.

“Will you take care of him?”, he asks instead.

“It’s the reason I came”, replies Theseus Scamander, but his attention is now on Credence. Taking him in, it seems, from head to toe.

Credence isn’t a person prone to Actual Calm. But he is at ease now - tired and hollow and yet... That was the answer he had needed to hear, and he’s grateful. “Thank you, Mr. Scamander.”

 _“Theseus._ Please.” There’s a pensive expression on his face. “What will happen to you?”

The church had been completely destroyed, and he has nowhere to go. Watching him, Credence realizes the other man knows this just as well.

He doesn’t tell him he just had wanted to make sure Mr. Graves had been Mr. Graves, that he was alive and on his way to healing before he _left._ His family is dead by his hand. Modesty had been picked by MACUSA and hadn’t recognized him when he slipped through the cracks in the room they had given her, not even in fear.

Miss Goldstein had saved him once and it had ruined her. The man he loved, _still loves,_ had been kidnapped and almost killed by a dark wizard - who had come to New York looking for a weapon Credence had, too late, realized was himself.

If he isn’t _Damned,_ for sure he’s at the very least _Cursed._

“What will happen to you?”, Mr. Scamander, _Theseus_ repeats, and he just shrugs with his hunched shoulders.

“I think”, Credence says, once he realizes the other man has really been waiting for his reply, “MACUSA’s still looking for me.”

Would giving himself up to the magical police be considered a suicide? Did it matter before God, with all the other things he had done?

And this man, Theseus, he looks so weary all of a sudden. It’s weird how he can read him. But then again, maybe it’s just the situation what’s obvious.

“That’s…”, he starts, and then he shakes his head. “I think Perce will want to see you, once he wakes up. You’re important to him.”

It had been as if all of the long-held rage in Credence’s heart had been spilled out and spent during the crisis with the Obscurus. These latter days, most of what he feels is rooted in exhaustion and despair.

And yet, and yet the lie burns low in his stomach. He curves himself further, looks away to keep it in and hide.

“I…”, he says after a moment, colder now, “hold no delusions of my importance, Mr. Scamander.”

Theseus just sits down on the chair next to the hospital bed, full body tilted towards him. Credence notices his hand remains threaded with Mr. Graves’ despite it all. He couldn’t ever blame him.

“Perce wrote about you in his letters”, he states. Soft and quiet, and is that _hurt_ in his eyes as he speaks? “I don’t think even he noticed how much, or how warmly.”

The enormity of the implications blows out what remains of Credence’s irritation. Keeps him silent. He would’ve never imagined--

He had fervently believed he hadn’t even met the real Mr. Graves, until he had lingered at the hospital to check, and had heard the whole story.

Grindelwald had broken him through two weeks.

Credence had met Mr. Graves back in May.

Theseus had, through God Knew How Long, been learning about Credence because _he mattered._

The other man rubs at his own eyes with his free hand, hiding how he was slumped all over the chair now with a sprawl that felt like bravado to him.

“Perce’s brownstone isn’t safe”, Theseus says, wiping his palm on his thigh. “But we’ve been setting an apartment as a safe house. I’m coding the wards for it.”

“... I’m”, Credence takes a deep breath. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I’d gladly keep you hidden there.” _For Percival Graves,_ he hears, even though that sentence had already ended. “So you can lie low, wait for Perce to wake up. Picquery’s going to want to appease him after this whole cock-up.”

And it’s a bit like the moonlight outside, feeble, flickering, turns to gold with its promise of _hope._

“He can fix this, Credence.”

And Credence, his fingertips start fading into subtle smoke, melding with the darkness of the room.

“Let me help you stay alive.”

And the entirety of him, Obscurial and Obscurus, blur into one at the sheer _rejection_ of these words. At odds with the stillness in his body, still solid and filled with static.

He has wanted to die for the longest time, Credence doesn’t say. Having survived the Aurors’ artillery had been no prize. Why should he miss the chance to try again?

But the quiet reply that comes out of his mind is a hint instead of something far more direct. Speaking plainly of the evils he has longed for doesn’t come naturally to him.

“Mr. Scamander, I’m not a good person.”

He’s a sinner through Word and Thought and Omission and Deeds. And ‘person’ is a misnomer, too.

Credence thinks of the sheer relief of lashing out the way he had done his best to bury all these years, the red, crackling blow of _Might_ the very second he had let go and merged into the chorus of a beast that could crumble down buildings as if they were loose plaster.

He had regretted it the second he had came back to his senses, and it was such a good thing he couldn’t use his sight as the Obscurus. He still doesn’t want to know what happened to the people crossing Their path. He already has too many reasons to disappear completely.

There’s no expiating any of it. His anger always terrified him, because giving into it meant Ma had won.

“I think you’re wrong”, Theseus counters. There’s structural firmness underneath the softness of his words. “I think you are, even though you haven’t been given reasons to be.”

A pause, and then the other man adds, “or chances.”

Credence has been promised Salvation for so long. It has blown up in his face every time.

It doesn’t mean he doesn’t want it.

He wills the Obscurus back, resists the temptation of vanishing into it again. He has missed every chance to just leave without further fuss, and Theseus _will tell all of this to Mr. Graves._ Whatever he does, whatever happens next.

“You’re important to Graves”, this man, this _baffling_ man who wears the coat of an Auror and speaks like he cares, keeps offering and offering. Even as there’s a terseness to his eyes that tells a story of hidden hurt - there’s such sincerity to him. “It showed through for months.”

Theseus betrays himself a little, Credence thinks, when he continues, “... every time a bit more.”

Melancholy is all over him, draped like a cloak. It’s the kind of shadow Credence knows well. And then, he goes and shrugs it away - and it doesn’t disappear but it doesn’t weigh him down as much as half a second ago.

Theseus seeks his eyes and finishes, “so really. I don’t see why wouldn’t you be important to me as well.”

Credence doesn’t have anything. And all of a sudden he’s being gifted something warmer, richer than death should he take it. Plain to see in the nighttime green holding his gaze.

He discovers he’s nodding way too late to stop and maybe, maybe it’s true he doesn’t want to take it back.

Theseus flashes him a smile that grows and grows until he’s grinning, and Credence feels the faintest trace of a stirring in his own lips in return. He touches them, surprised he still has the capacity for it. 

“Let’s plan together”, he says, patting an empty spot on Mr. Graves’ bed so he can sit, “to see how can we get you home safely.”

The word hurts. But it’s a good hurt, and Credence knows the other man means it, even if it’s something he can’t believe himself. He _should linger,_ so he will, and maybe it’s going to just be a brief stop before deciding life isn’t worth it anyway. A liminal space.

He doesn’t know Theseus Scamander. But he’s seen straight through every of his gestures, and has found honesty behind each of them. And Mr. Graves, perhaps it’s true he’ll miss him if he doesn’t stay a little longer. He wants to find out for himself.

This plunge he’s taking, Credence thinks, is going to be his last attempt at trust.

“Together...” he breathes out, and the sound of his steps closing the distance to these men is louder than fear.

There’s nothing else he can lose. And he dares to sit down. To finally touch Percival Graves’ free hand, something unraveling when he finds it _real._ He can’t help but swallow past the knot in his throat, and reach further to hold it proper.

“Alright, then”, and his voice does shake, but there it is.

The span of Theseus’ long fingers covers both of them with ease. It feels like safety.

Credence smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Graphic credits for [Elsie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/na_shao) as well!
> 
> The alternative title and summary for this fic was "Schrodinger's Lovers, and _"So a man who may or may not be alive is visited by a man who may or may not be his lover, and ends up saving a boy who may or may not be a person",_ respectively.
> 
> But Graves _is_ alive, and Theseus _is_ his lover, and Credence _is_ a human being, so it all works better in the end like this: A hospital room past midnight, transitional stage between one kind of life and the next one, and nobody involved actually knows what will happen next but hey. It's worth to stay and see, right? ♥
> 
> (Spoilers: They'll make this work and everyone will be far happier for it. #It'sLaw)
> 
> I know begging for comments is like, super 2004 or something, but I do live and breathe for them so... if you've read this far, keep in mind I'd love to hear about it ;3


End file.
